Strategic FP&A Moves That Transform Businesses With Josh Aharonoff

Those who already have an FPA background are way ahead of the game. The biggest thing for me in FP and A is really understanding how to.

Why do you think that is so important in FP&A?

In terms of offering FP&A services, it's really crucial that you understand how to build an incredible financial model. People think that you create a financial model once, okay, now you're done with it. In reality, every single month you should be updating your assumptions. You should be analyzing what exactly took place. I do believe that three statements unlock a huge amount of value. But you also, when you have a three statement model, you really encompass every aspect of the business. So that's probably the biggest reason why I love three statement modeling. You encompass the profitability of the business and the cash flows of the business. One opportunity may not be right for someone, another opportunity, same industry, same type of work could be that jackpot for you. One of my favorite things in working with a startup is also one of the biggest challenges. And that's just foreign.

Guy here. Have you ever wanted to level up your FP A skills? Then check out the FP and A Guy's Ultimate Course Bundle at the fpnaguy.com that's the FP A n--a guy.com and use code podcast to save 25%. Get started learning today. Hello everyone. Welcome to FPA tomorrow where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, AKA the FPA Guy, and I'll be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A. Each week we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners. This week we are joined by Josh Aronoff. Josh, welcome to the show.

Thanks Paul. Great to be here.

Yeah, very excited to have you. So we start every episode off with this question. From your experience and your perspective, what does great FPA look like? What is great fpa?

The way I would define that great FPA is quick access to data that does not conflict with one another and easy inputs to see different scenarios, different outcomes, allowing you to also compare those scenarios to what happened in the past versus what you thought would happen.

I like it. Makes sense. Why don't you tell our audience about yourself, your background, what you're doing today, how you ended up, where you're at as your CFO guy. Is your shirts as?

Sure, yeah, I've had quite the wild journey. I graduated with a Master's in accounting, got my CPA and started off where many accountants feel is the golden place to start and that is big four accounting. I did that for about two years. I was doing global, I was doing taxes for the global banking services. And I didn't realize at the time, but it wasn't really something I was interested in, wasn't really something I was good at. So after two years, both the company I was working for and myself, we kind of had this mutual parting and I thought, oh man, I chosen the wrong career. I'm not destined to be an accountant. What was I thinking? So I created my own startup with two of my close friends. For two years we did online language training via video chat. That was before Zoom and Google Meets was like a thing. So we were still using Skype and we dreamed of really scaling that to like anything that you want to learn, you could learn with a live one on one tutorial. It was an amazing experience this time. I loved the experience, but as I like to say, it didn't really love me back so much. Really tough. A lot of assumptions that I thought about how to be an entrepreneur, how to grow a successful company when it came time to validate, they just didn't really work out. So great experience. But unfortunately we had to admit defeat and go separate ways with the company. I then got involved in consulting. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next, but I came across an opportunity to work for a venture capital firm that had this like bookkeeping, outsourced finance and accounting arm. And I thought, wow, this is the perfect balance I'm interested in. Like what did I do wrong with my startups? I can connect with founders directly and my background is as a cpa. Hopefully I still remember a few things I can get back into the field. So I did that for a few years. Absolutely loved it. Learned so much in the experience, connected with dozens and dozens of startups, learned a lot on the accounting side. And that was the first time that I got involved in the FP and A side. And then about five years ago, I decided to make the leap once more to the entrepreneurial life and start mighty digits. We do outsourced finance and accounting work. About two years into that, I started posting content on LinkedIn. Now I've grown to close to 400,000 followers there. I have a daily newsletter with 80,000 followers as well, a YouTube channel and all that good stuff. So that's what brings me to where I am today. And the birth of your CFO guy.

Only 400,000 followers, is that it?

I know I'm working on Driving that number higher every day.

Well, congratulations. That sounds like quite the journey and experience, from working to the Big four to doing your own thing and building a following on LinkedIn and other platforms. Thankfully, stage specializing in that area. What is it you like so much about that? I love the right area in accounting. Even if you were in accounting. So just a number of things all came together to say, wait a second, this is not working for me. And.

And it's. It's one of those things where, like, while you're going through it, you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. Yeah, I'm okay. And then like, after you go through, you look back and you're like, wait a minute. That was not an experience that I really enjoy. That was not an experience for me. So hindsight is 2020 for sure.

No, totally agree. I worked at for a company that everybody I'd talk to after they left, they stayed in touch with a lot of them. They'd be like, realize how bad it was. Like, I feel free now. Like, just. You could see a total difference. Like, what. What took me so long?

For sure.

Because often when you're in something that's a real challenge, you just kind of grind through it.

Yeah.

That you're not a good fit for whatever. And then you look back after when you're in a better, healthier spot for you and go, wow, that really was not good for me for sure.

And.

And it may be nothing. Nobody did anything wrong. Just wasn't the right fit. And sometimes it could be it was a bad environment.

Right. Both of those, definitely. And I do want to stress again that a lot of times it's not a good environment for someone, but it could be a great environment for someone else at the same time. I've also worked with tons of companies and I've just come across companies that are just like, it doesn't matter who you are. This is a bad environment.

So, yes, there are roles and industries that are just not good fits for certain people. And then there are just unhealthy companies that really aren't good for just about anybody, for sure. And you know, you got it. The one you run from when they're just a completely toxic culture. Just never a good environment. The other one, you may be there for a while, but you got to figure out what's going to make you happy, what are you good at and where your passions are. And we've all worked with great people that are not necessarily a good fit for the role they're in. I had someone that worked in FP&A and just was not a good fit for FP&A, but was a great person. It's like, okay, you need to find where your strengths are and where you're going to be happy. Because if you're not happy, it's really hard to do great work.

For sure. I think all the time. I have a close friend who was laid off from a job and he spent a year looking for the right opportunity. We're all, we were a little bit nervous for him and maybe four or five years ago he accepted a role. And ever since then he has been climbing and climbing and climbing. I feel like it's literally every week that he's getting another promotion. The company is also doing amazing. He's managing tons of people. And it really just put into perspective for me of, hey, one opportunity may not be right for someone, another opportunity, same industry, same type of work could be that jackpot for you.

Well, and so much also depends on finding the right manager, you know, fitting your style, the right people you're working with. Because you could be in a role and with a certain manager, you're loving it. And with the next manager you're like, I'm out of here for sure. This isn't working.

That's a big fact.

Really, it's really interesting. And so going back to startups here for a minute, I want to ask you what's the biggest challenge about working with startups that you've experienced? What do you find is kind of that biggest challenge? You're working with companies at such an early stage.

So there are a few things. One of my favorite things in working with a startup is also one of the biggest challenges. And that's just the constant state of chaos. There's never just a period, for the most part, of calmness. We're going to continue doing what we're doing. It's always, you're reinventing yourself. It's always they're hiring 10 people, they're firing five people. It's this constant state of evolution, of iteration of what got me here is not going to get me there. That could certainly be a really big challenge. Similarly, every startup, until you get to series D E, until you start going for break even, IPO or whatever, they really have what I like to call a terminal illness. They have a date that the doctor says, hey, you guys are going out of business if you don't raise capital or find a way to inject more funds into the business by this specific date. Now, ideally, you know, when that data is a really strong ahead of time. You don't want to be taken by surprise. I've seen that happen a few times. It's never pretty, but that stress of needing to constantly raise capital fundraising in many ways is a huge distraction. It doesn't necessarily help the company actually grow in terms of finding product market fit, in terms of building the culture. It's something that you just need to do in order to survive. So I think the fundraising process, especially in the climate that we're in today with interest rates being so high, could add a lot of stress on a company. Whereas another company that's a lifestyle company, maybe it's not growing as quickly. They're self funded based off of customer receipts. They won't necessarily have as much of.

That challenge FP and a Guy Here today I want to talk about the FP and a guy's ultimate FP and a course bundle. This bundle includes over 10 hours of content recorded by Ron Monteiro and myself, many templates and great lessons to make you a better FP and a professional. The content includes FPA Business partnering, how to manage tough conversations, build world class relationships and hold the business accountable. Includes Modern Excel, which is a real game changer for the way you'll work in Excel. Excel Tables, the gateway to Modern Excel Power Query, a game changer for transforming.

Your the fact that like just the people around me, I didn't feel a good connection with. I didn't have a good connection with my manager. I didn't feel like he was really looking out for me or anything like that. That I think was the number one issue. But the second issue, which was okay, that was something that I had an issue with. They also had an issue with me. I wasn't really so good at my job and that was the fact that I didn't really understand how wide and vast of a field finance and accounting is. When I graduated. I thought you go to big four, you go to big four, you accomplish everything the rest of your career. Now you go from big four to private or whatever. And Big four really just gives you two, maybe three options. Audit, tax and maybe advisory. But that's less on the accounting side. So I thought to myself, I'm either going to be a tax professional or I'm going to be an audit professional. There's nothing really in between. And I thought tax would be cool because it's very practical. I can maybe open my own like, you know, CPA office one day and do tax returns for people, but there's just so much research involved in the rules that are constantly changing. And there's. It's just so ambiguous. It blows my mind that the government makes it so difficult for you to not only file your taxes, but just understand what you need to report on your tax return to being compliant. And I'm a numbers guy. Give me a spreadsheet. I'll get lost in hours. Give me an article with technical information. I'll barely be able to read the first, you know, two or three sentences. So I think that was probably one of the biggest challenges for me. Not really just understanding what I was good at and just complex tax documentation was definitely not a good fit.

Makes sense. So there was part of. There's some cultural things people. There was definitely the tax side in that. That wasn't the right area in accounting, even if you were in accounting. So just a number of things all came together to say, wait a second, this is not working for me.

And it's one of those things where, like, while you're going through it, you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. Yeah, I'm okay. And then like, after you go through, you look back and you're like, wait a minute. That was not an experience that I really enjoy. That was not an experience for me. So hindsight is 2020 for sure.

You know. Totally agree. I worked at for a company that everybody I'd talk to after they left and stayed in touch with, a lot of them, they'd be like, didn't realize how bad it was. Like, I feel free now. Like just. You could see a total difference. Like what. What took me so long?

For sure.

Because often when you're in something that's a real challenge, you just kind of grind through it.

Yeah.

That you're not a good fit for whatever. And then you look back after when you're in a better, healthier spot for you and go, wow, that really was not good for me for sure.

And.

And it maybe nothing. Nobody did anything wrong. Just wasn't the right fit. And sometimes it could be it was a bad environment. Right.

Both of those, definitely. And I do want to stress again that a lot of times it's not a good environment for someone, but it could be a great environment for someone else at the same time.

Hundred.

I've also worked with tons of companies and I've just come across companies that are just like, it doesn't matter who you are. This is a bad environment.

So yes, there are roles and industries that are just not good fits for certain people. And then there are just unhealthy companies that really aren't good for just about anybody for sure. And you know, you got it. The one you run from when they're just a completely toxic culture, just never a good environment. The other one, you may be there for a while, but you got to figure out what's going to make you happy, what are you good at and where your passions are. And we've all worked with great people that are not necessarily a good fit for the role they're in. I had someone that worked in FP&A and just was not a good fit for FP&A, but was a great person. Okay. You need to find where your strengths are and where you're going to be happy. Because if you're not happy, really hard to do great work for sure.

I think all the time. I have a close friend who is laid off from a job and he spent a year looking for the right opportunity. We're all, we were a little bit nervous for him and maybe four or five years ago he accepted a role. And ever since then he has been climbing and climbing and climbing. I feel like it's literally every week that he's getting another promotion. The company is also doing amazing. He's managing tons of people. And it really just put into perspective for me of, hey, one opportunity may not be right for someone, another opportunity, same industry, same type of work could be that jackpot for you.

Well, and so much also depends on finding the right manager, you know, fitting your style, the right people you're working with, because you could be in a role and with a certain manager, you're loving it. And with the next manager, you're like, I'm out of here for sure. This isn't working.

That's a big factor, really.

It's really interesting. And so going back to startups here for a minute, I want to ask you, what's the biggest challenge about working with startups that you've experienced? What do you find is kind of that biggest challenge of working with companies at such an early stage?

So there are a few things. One of my favorite things in working with a startup is also one of the biggest challenges. And that's just the constant state of chaos. There's never just a period, for the most part, of calmness. We're going to continue doing what we're doing. It's always, you're reinventing yourself. It's always, they're hiring 10 people, they're firing five people. It's this constant state of evolution, of iteration of what got me here is not going to get me there. That could certainly be a really big challenge. Similarly, every startup until you get to series D E, until you start going for break even IPO or whatever, they really have what I like to call a terminal illness. They have a date that the doctor says, hey, you guys are going out of business if you don't raise capital or find a way to inject more funds into the business by this specific date. Now ideally, you know when that date is a really strong ahead of time, you don't want to be taken by surprise. I've seen that happen a few times. It's never pretty. But that stress of needing to constantly raise capital. Fundraising in many ways is a huge distraction. It doesn't necessarily help the company actually grow in terms of finding product market fit, in terms of building the culture. It's something that you just need to do in order to survive. So I think the fundraising process, especially in the climate that we're in today with interest rates being so high, could add a lot of stress on a company. Whereas another company that's a lifestyle company, maybe it's not growing as quickly. They're self funded based off of customer receipts. They won't necessarily have as much of.

That challenge FP and a Guy Here today I want to talk about the FP and a guy's ultimate FP and a course bundle. This bundle includes over 10 hours of content recorded by Ron Monteiro and myself, many templates and great lessons to make you a better FP and a professional. The content includes FP and a business partnering how to manage tough conversations, build world class relationships and hold the business accountable. Includes Modern Excel, which is a real game changer for the way you'll work in Excel. Excel Tables, the gateway to Modern Excel Power Query, a game changer for transforming your manual processes and loading data and then dynamic arrays. Next we cover modeling design principles. In this course we talk about the importance of designing models in a certain way and how important it is that you think about design. And last but not least, driving value through smart analysis. How you can conduct data analysis to be a better FP and a professional. Go ahead and sign up for this bundle@the fpnaguy.com that's the FP end a n-guy.com use the code podcast to save 25% get started learning today. You know, I could tell most of us are young when everybody's like, interest rates are so high. They're about average historically, but given the last 15 years, 3% and 7%, that feels super high right it's amazing what happens when you get used to all basically virtually free money. When you consider a 2% inflation a year. Right. 1% is pretty close to free on a true basis to all of a sudden 4%, that's a 400% increase. It's amazing to watch how it's changed behavior so quickly and it's almost no different than kind of the long term average for interest rates. I always find it fascinating that whole conversation and watching the behavior and how quickly things have changed the last few years as we've had to fight inflation. I'm sure it's had a huge impact on your business.

For sure. Definitely. Really big impact. I think the correlation between interest rates and startup funding, it's like just direct. So the lower the interest rates, the easier venture capital firms can raise capital from LPs, the quicker they'll be deploying those capitals, they'll be calling up new capital, the easier of a time startups will have and raising additional rounds and getting higher valuations. I never really understood or appreciated just how much of a connection there is until this recently happened because again we started the firm five years ago. I'm about to 12, 13 years into my career, so I never really experienced something like this.

Yeah, well, that's exactly it. It's. If you haven't experienced it, how do you know? You kind of have to go through it. You can hear about it. But it's so different when you experience something yourself versus you read about it or you hear somebody tell you about it. It's just, it's not the same.

I feel like being in an election year also. I've heard plays a big factor in just the economy as a whole and there's just like less risk until it's who's going to be the new president. So I'm waiting to see how that'll change as well.

Especially any regular heavily regulated industry. But in general, companies will wait to make their investment decisions once they're comfortable they know who's going to be in charge. Makes sense because that changes the economic, the government regulation, the landscape.

Right.

Are you going to have a split Congress in the U.S. i mean there's also, you know, we have a lot of global people listening. We'll be clear, we're talking about the US here. But who's your president? Who's in charge of your Senate and your House? Is it a split government? All those things impact regulation, the economy. And so it's really interesting to watch. That uncertainty puts a lot of people on pause. Like I'M going to hold this money till I'm a little more confident in the decisions that will be made and how they'll impact my business for sure. Question for you. You know, you've worked with a lot of startups, you've done a lot of funding. What advice would you offer for somebody listening? They've done fpa, they spent a lot of their career in IT and they want to start a firm offering advisory services. What advice would you offer them? That seems to be a common path these days of a lot of FPA people saying I'm going to do advisory services, fractional cfo, whatever you want to call it.

So I think those who already have an FPA background are way ahead of the game. I think the best way to grow.

A firm is I said I'm excited, I'm, I'm there, I should have done this.

And though I think not not only knowing the FPA side of things, but I think if you also know the accounting side of things, you'll be able to pick up so much more business around month end close any accounting operation items like accounts payable management, invoicing management, payroll management and so forth. So I think just understanding both sides will help make you more rounded and a lot of times you'll work with a client in one capacity and their needs will grow and you'll start working with them in another capacity. I think if we're just talking about advisory services though, the biggest thing for me in FP and A is really understanding how to put together a forecast that not only tells the future but but also showcases the past and allows you to easily tell the story of where the company has been working then directly with management, the board of directors, investors, understanding what are the key metrics that they're tracking, what inputs do they want to tweak and then what are the results of those inputs and do they match and make sense with regards to what things have looked like historically? Being able to build this robust financial model that's in essence your hub of all the information that you need from where the company has been and where the business is going, to me is the biggest part in just FP and A, let alone opening an advisory services platform.

What, what advice would you offer to somebody who wants to start offering advisory services, has maybe worked in FP&A and they want to go out on their own. What are some of the things they should be thinking about?

So a few things on that. I think if you're going off on your own, the most important thing is that you first have enough customers to be able to survive being on your own. And I like to think of that as like a valley of death, a chasm that you need to in essence cross where you have enough committed monthly recurring revenue, where you don't necessarily worry about, am I going to be able to do this in the long term? So if you're working for someone and you're thinking of going off on your own, as long as your contract doesn't state that you can't work with clients on the side, I certainly wouldn't recommend you poach any clients. But it's a good idea to try to pick up some clients while you're still working. That's actually how I started mighty digits. I was working nights, I was working weekends, I was working crazy hours. But eventually that paid off and allowed me to go off on my own. If you're offering advisory services specifically, consider also learning the accounting side of things. Because a lot of times you'll start working with a client who needs, let's say, FP and A services, and their needs will expand to also need bookkeeping services, accounts payable management, invoicing. If they're not working with you, they're working with another firm. And odds are that Firm also offers FP&A services. Lastly, in terms of offering FP&A services, it's really crucial that you understand how to build just like an incredible financial model, one that tells you an entire story of where the company has been, as well as the entire story of where the company is going. And you should be able to easily tweak those levers to understand what that future will look like. And then as the future takes place each and every single month, you should be able to understand why did this take place compared to what I thought would take place, and what changes do we need to make?

So I'm curious, your background was accounting. Was it really hard when you started your own business to get into the advisory side? You started mostly offering more of the accounting, right?

So I actually started working as a fractional VP of finance, which was really just on the FP and A side. And I was fortunate that in my job, right before I went off on my own, I was exposed to both sides. I really started just on the accounting side, but I very quickly picked up the FP and A side and I absolutely loved it.

What did you love about FP&A? What's your favorite part about FP&A?

My favorite part by far is the conversations that you have with the people at the top of the company. You get incredible transparency into who's on their team. I love just seeing like how much does each person make, how much does the CEO paying him or herself? You understand also the growth strategy. What are the channels and levers that the company is investing in in order to grow the company? And you get to have these like brainstorming sessions directly, oftentimes with the CEO going back and forth, making that CEO's vision become a reality on a spreadsheet. That's by far my favorite part.

I love the business partnering side and those conversations you have. I totally understand what you're saying. That is the most enjoyable. I mean, I love a good variance commentary, but not quite as much as those conversations. So, you know, when it comes to fpa, I know you're a big believer that FPA needs to be able to build three statement models. Why do you think that is so important in FP and A?

Oh boy, here we go. We're gonna have a battle right here now, right? You're gonna tell me three statements are not needed? Three statements are needed, I promise you.

No.

Well, I do believe that three statements unlock a huge amount of value. But you also helped me understand that not all businesses have three statement models. And that's okay. So I'll first make the case for why I think you need a three statement model. When you have a three statement model, you really encompass every aspect of the business. You encompass the profitability of the business and the cash flows of the business. And the cash flows is not really something that you need to forecast out separately. Instead, you forecast out the changes to your profit and loss and balance sheet. And then creating a statement of cash flows with the indirect method, you could easily showcase what your cash flows will actually be. So that's probably the biggest reason why I love three statement modeling. And it's also really helpful when you connect your financial statements to your accounting software where you could easily pull in actuals and refresh that information at the same time. I will say I have come to appreciate that not all companies need a three statement model. In fact, as companies grow in size and complexity, it may not even be feasible to manage a three statement model. Instead, you have all these different departments and all these different groups in charge of justice. A specific aspect of a financial model, whether that be the revenue, whether that be the headcount, whether that be the cost drivers or anything else. And a lot of times a company will have their own treasury department just responsible for managing the cash flows. Instead of having that tied into a three statement model. So I would say earlier stage companies, SMBs, three statement models I think are totally the way to go. Larger companies, Fortune 500, I could understand that a three statement model may not be applicable.

And why did you say here we go, do you want to give the backstory on that one? Were you expecting me to attack you or something?

So once upon a time I posted a post on LinkedIn that was titled 10 Forecasting Mistakes. And one of those forecasting mistakes was not including all three statements in a financial model. And you commented on that post in a respectful way, but also challenging me saying, josh, I have to be entirely honest. In my career I actually never worked with a three statement model and I've seen tons and tons of companies not have a three statement model in place. And I think that's okay. And you and I then went a bit down in the rabbit hole in the comment section where I said, hey, I gotta be honest, I've never really heard of this before because all I know is startups and SMBs.

Yep.

And I asked you, walk me through, how does that work? And then I said, well, how would you again forecast cash flows? And you helped me understand the fact that a Treasury Department, once a company gets to a certain size, would instead be responsible for that. So I've come to appreciate the fact that not all companies really need a three statement model.

Yeah. And it's really interesting that conversation because I have it all the time. It's not just you. And people need to understand the three statement. I think we can all agree with that. You need to understand the inner workings of them, how different changes impact cash balance sheet. But it's so interesting how different it is depending on what size of company you support. Like you said. Right. I pretty much can guarantee you, we all know Apple isn't trying to roll up a 3 statement. Right. As we talked about, it's the Treasury. And so it's really interesting to see how different FPA can be and how different our perspective can be depending on where we've worked. And so I, I love that conversation and just the importance of the 3 statement because I'm a huge believer like you people need to understand the three statements regardless of whether you're modeling or off. And to me, that's the first and one of the most important things of fpna. And if you're working in startup like you did for most of your career, you better understand and be able to build a 3 statement or you're not going to last long in a startup environment because you know watching that cash so closely in that forecasting is critical. I'm sure you've seen more than one company probably die on the vine because of a cash flow issue for sure. Right? They can't get funding and so they have to shut down. I'm going to guess that's probably the most common one you see is funding's drying up. Nobody wants to invest at this point.

Definitely. I will add this one tidbit that a three statement model doesn't always make sense for every company. However, I strongly feel that every FPA professional should understand how a three statement model works. Because I think if you understand how to create a three statement model, you understand so much of the accounting side of a business where the profit and loss connects to the balance sheet. How when you make a change in one area, another area can specifically be affected. A lot of times I see FP&A professionals, they could do some really dangerous things with a spreadsheet, but they don't really understand the fundamentals of double entry accounting and journal entries. And when you really understand that other side of things, it just unlocks so much more capabilities and value in your career. So I would say every FP and a professional should understand how to create a three statement model, but not every company should have a three statement model.

Looking to level up your career and build skills that make you stand out to FP and A hiring managers? How about earning a certificate from a world renowned business school? Wharton Online and Wall Street Prep have partnered to create an eight week online financial planning and analysis certificate program. You'll learn the art of forecasting, analysis, business partnering and financial storytelling from Wharton Online's world class faculty. Coupled with firsthand exposure to technical and interpersonal skills with real world applications as practiced in top quality corporations. Space is limited. So level up your career today and use the Discount code the FPAguy 300 to receive $300 off tuition that is the FPA guy. 300 to receive $300 off tuition Learn more by going to Wallstreetprep Wharton UPenn Eduardo yeah, and I would go probably challenge that a little bit. I think everybody should understand the workings of the three statement whether they're comfortable building all the details of it or not. I'm not as worried as long as you understand the workings and how they interact. Which if you do you can figure out the mechanics of building one because I think the mechanics are a little more nuanced than really understanding the accounting behind it if you haven't built them. But that that's for me coming from the large. But I totally agree with you. You have to understand the working completely there with you of the accounting behind it. I've worked with many FPA people that don't understand the accounting and it just creates problems because you need to be able to have those conversations. You need to be able to look at the P and L and say something's not right here. Was there an accounting that was done? If you can't figure out anything else, okay, what was done in accounting? What's the accrual? What assumptions did we use? Like I supported a business and our numbers were just way off and it came turned out they were using a very high level process for the accruals and not taking any of the timing into consideration. And we're having these huge swings of like 10 in our revenue from the accrual. And I'm like, no, no, no. This is a business that has timing and walking through. Here's why. And all the different impacts of that. And so understanding the business, understanding the accounting and how it ties together makes you a better, much better FBA program professional. I'm fully with you on that. So I'm going to switch gears here again a little bit. We talked about this at the beginning. You have 400,000 followers or almost 400 on LinkedIn, probably over 400 by the time this is released at the rate you're growing, right? He's like, I hope so. You were awarded a top voice. Talk about that journey. How has it helped you be a better finance professional? How's it helped you in your career?

So I think that ties into the comment that I wanted to slightly challenge a little bit more that you just mentioned of the fact that it's important to understand the interlinkings of the three financial statements, but not necessarily important to be able to create a three statement model. And the way I see it, there are really three levels of learning something. The first level is taking that knowledge in from one of your senses or all of your senses. You, you see something that someone says, you hear something, whatever it is and so forth. The second level to me is actually doing something. And you'll always have have this ceiling where you won't be able to truly grasp something until you actually do it. You think you'll understand it, but then when you start doing it, you'll realize there are all these different edge cases that you didn't really think through. And through fighting through those edge cases, you really understand it so much more. The third level of understanding something I like to say, is to be able to then teach it back to someone else. So great fortune cookie I used to have in my wallet that said to teach is to learn twice. So my journey in posting every single day on LinkedIn, the first six months or so, it didn't really turn out. I wasn't really getting much engagement, but I kept at it. I learned a lot more. I actually started working with you and you gave me some tips and advice, which I think was really my turning point. And it was through posting about these topics that I learned so much more. Even a topic of just like how to read a profit and loss, I always understood it, but I didn't really understand the interlinkings, the details of the different sections of the patterns that you could actually see in a profit and loss. So my favorite part about this journey is that I have just learned so much, not only through teaching, but through people then responding in comments, oftentimes challenging me, saying, hey, you actually didn't get the full picture here. It's really something else that's just been the most rewarding part for me.

I love that and I agree with you. When you teach something, you really know it. There's a. There's a lot of value in being able to teach something. And I've definitely been challenged along the way too, by people like, I disagree with you here, or this doesn't make sense, or have you thought about that? And there's times when you make discard what somebody says, and there's other times when it really hits you and you're like, oh, I never thought of it that way. And you want to dig deeper and it helps you as well as having to prepare stuff. If you're trying to teach something, you have to really understand it. Totally agree with you on that. So I'm glad the journey's helped you as much as it has. Do you have a favorite moment from, you know, kind of posting and building a following? Is there kind of a moment where you're like, wow, that really kind of hit home for you?

A few exciting moments. There were a few posts in the very beginning that like, you know, took off in the sense that it got like over a hundred engagements. And that was my very first time that I ever saw that. That was just like, whoa, this is so cool. I've had some really cool people engage with my posts before, one of them being Microsoft Office themselves. They apparently have like a LinkedIn page. I posted something on Excel and they actually commented on it. That was really cool. I've had also a few Posts go, like, mega viral and get, like, over 12 million impressions. And one of the mega viral posts, in fact, a few of them I posted not really thinking anything of it. Yeah, it would do well. It would maybe resonate. And, like, someone would text me saying, oh, my God, I love what you just posted. This is incredible. And I would check the stats on it and be like, whoa, this is crazy. This is really going viral. I guess one thing, though, that comes to mind. I was trying to do a post on Excel keyboard shortcuts. I have, like, dozens of them now. But when I was trying to do the post, I was really thinking to myself, how can I make this in a way that's not only highlighting my favorite keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel, but also make it in a way that's just, like, visually appealing and also a way that you could understand even more about the topic through the way it's presented visually. And LinkedIn has this thing where everything is represented in a portrait mode. YouTube, you'll tilt your phone and it'll be in landscape mode. So the challenge to me was, how can I make a keyboard that is in a portrait mode? Because keyboards go sideways. And I was going back and forth, and I was actually away with some friends in Canada, and when we went to pay for the meter, the keyboard on the screen was in a portrait mode. And I took a picture of it, and I sent it to my designer, and I'm like, this is the style right here. This is how we should post it. And I posted that, and I told all my friends on the trip, I said, Guys, in 24 hours, this will have over a million impressions. Mark my words. And it actually did. It was, like, just under a million impressions. But for, you know, the sake of the goal, I think it also might hit it. That was probably one of my favorite experiences.

Cool. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. And speaking of Excel, I've heard you recently have been recognized by Microsoft. Do you want to share a little bit about that?

That is correct. Yeah. You know, I had always dreamed of becoming a Microsoft mvp, and so many of the people that I've been following for what feels like just decades have been a Microsoft mvp. That I always said to myself one day, like, wow, I know that it'll be an incredible accomplishment if I ever actually get to that level. So the way that the program works is you have to be referred by another mvp. So there was someone in my network who I saw recently became an mvp, and we'd engage before, and we would chat in he's also a fellow LinkedIn creator creator. So I reached out to him and I said, hey, do you feel comfortable, you know, nominating me? And he was like, look, why don't you start posting a little bit more on your YouTube journey. Let me know when you feel ready. I'll go ahead and make that referral. And I don't want to overstep any boundaries. So I started posting more on, on YouTube and then he reached out saying, hey, I'm happy to make the introduction. It was about a three month process and I eventually got the email saying that I'd been accepted and it's just been really surreal ever since.

Well, congratulations. I know that's a huge honor and there's not a lot of people in the world that get that. So keep up the great work you're doing there. One more question about Excel, then we're going to move into our kind of what I call a rapid fire. We just asked some quick, quick questions with short answers and a get to know you section. The first thing is what, what would you like to see Excel add next? Last couple years they've been making a ton of changes. Is there somewhere you'd like to see them go, something you think is missing in the tool?

I think the biggest thing that we're all on the edge of our seats waiting to see what happens is when Microsoft Excel's AI capabilities will truly take off in terms of data management. And they do have copilot right now. They do have some sort of like forecasting tools that can allow you to predict what the future would look like. I'm talking about like I upload a profit and loss in any sort of format. I'm chatting with something in Microsoft Excel to confirm how this data is structured. I'm attaching a general ledger and I'm getting a board report in a matter of seconds that Excel is telling me this is what happened, this is how it compares to a prior period, this is how it compares to your budget. This expense went up, this expense went down. We're definitely going to get there at some point, but I'm like, I just can't wait until we do see what's interesting.

I, I see a lot of stuff coming with Python, the machine learning, huge things with AI, you think a code interpreter and things like that, just how much easier it will be, the data science things. I think that's what I'm most excited about is when they really start integrating the AI with Python, because that's coming as well. So there's just so Many different areas. It's an exciting time to watch. I mean, the Excel of today is not the Excel of two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. It is a different tool, even though it has the same shell and it's still a desktop application.

I would add one more thing to that, I think along the same subject, and that is Excel's data visualization capabilities. There are a lot more powerful tools. Power BI is more powerful. Tableau is probably on the opposite side of the spectrum of one of the most powerful tools out there. At the same time, I think people oftentimes love just staying in Excel and the ability to have unstructured data and change it and link it up to a graph is a huge value add. But I find that charts, graphs, dashboards, all these things, you really have to know what you're doing and, you know, been your way around the block to put together a really nice dashboard and a chart. And Excel doesn't really make it so easy to do that now. I'm happy in many ways because of that, because a lot of people will purchase my dashboards and everything because it's not so easy for them to do. But I feel like at some point in the future we're going to see the ability where you could easily just via plain text, say, I want a dashboard that looks like this, that's connect to this data, that has these colors and I could change these inputs and the information will update and so forth.

Sure. I definitely think there's a lot of opportunity there in dashboards as well. A lot of directions they can go and exciting time. Will be fun to have a chat again in five years and see where spreadsheets are at, where Excel's at, what else is out there. Because it's just such a rapidly changing technology landscape right now. All right, so there's the rapid fire section. The goal is to keep these answers short, ideally no more than, you know, 10 to 20 seconds. Some of them may only be as, as little as a word. So we're going to start here with what is the number one technical skill for FPA professionals to master Excel? All right, what is the number one soft or human skill for FPA professionals to master?

Collaborating with others.

I like it. All right, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about fpa, what would you change?

Allowing it to be a degree that you could actually get, rather than something that you just like fall into through another degree.

I like that. I haven't had that answer. I like that one. Basically making it more of an educational program out there so people could learn about it and prepare for it at an earlier age.

Yeah, there's just like no path similar to, like, becoming like a product manager. You can't really major in something like that. You kind of have to, like, fall into it, and it's like, not an easy thing.

Yeah, that's what I did. There was an opportunity to get promoted. They hired me for the role and I fell into it. So I. I get it. What is the one software you cannot live without in FP&A?

I think I'll just keep all my answers to Excel.

I knew you were going to say that. I'm like, he's going to say Excel. I almost didn't even ask that one. Are you currently using Generative AI and if so, how?

Not so much on the finance and accounting side of things, but a lot of times I'll be preparing a LinkedIn post and I'll need to do a lot of research and just understand a lot of different definitions, examples, and working with ChatGPT in order to, like, produce a viral infographic is really helpful.

All right, here's the get to know you section. That finishes kind of the technical rapid fire there. So now we want to get to know a little bit more about Josh. What's your favorite hobby or passion outside of work?

Man, I forgot that those things exist with how busy I've been, but I've always, always had a knack for cooking. This may not be considered cooking, but I love sushi. And I love making sushi as well.

My daughter loves sushi. She's loved it since she was like five. And we've made it a few times. We both like sushi, so I'm a sushi fan, so I know where I'm coming when I come to New York in October. I'm going to come find you, Josh, for some sushi.

Please do. We got to meet.

All right, it's a plan. What is one book? If you can only recommend one book, what's the book you're going to recommend to our audience?

I really enjoyed Never Split the Difference, which is a book on people think. It's about negotiating and manipulating others, and it certainly can be used that way. It's more about understanding how to establish rapport with someone and how to create a mutually beneficial outcome when you're both having a conversation about something.

Agree. I've listened to the book and I had an opportunity to attend a small group session with the author where we got to ask a Q and A. Christopher Voss.

Oh, really cool.

Fabulous book. Yeah, it was a really cool opportunity. A lot of fun. Favorite travel destination. If you can go one place in the world. You're leaving tomorrow. Where are you going?

I'd love to visit somewhere like Alaska. I feel like that would be a really cool place to visit.

I have been to Alaska. Highly recommended. I used to have family that lives there. It's a lot of fun. Pretty amazing. I would see a grizzly bear almost bounding across the whole road. There's actually, I think it was a black bear, but, you know, nonetheless a bear. And then if you could have dinner with one person alive in the world, who you taking to dinner? Other than me, of course.

I would say Elon Musk.

Why?

I'm just amazed at what he has been able to create in terms of the various companies, in terms of the successful track record that he's had, in terms of what he continues to put out. Now, people have their qualms with Elon Musk, and I may not say the same thing in terms of him being a role model as a family man, though. I don't know the details of that. But just in terms of an entrepreneur, I think he's easily the greatest entrepreneur of our generation.

Yeah. What he's accomplished in the business world is amazing. Regardless of what you think of politics or family or. Right. We can all find things of everybody that we don't like or that we could question. But you can't question what he's accomplished, and you could surely learn from it. So you're not the first to mention him, and I'm sure you won't be the last. He's a fascinating figure for sure. All right, if you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be better at fpa, particularly be a better business partner. What's that advice?

It could just be one.

We'll give you two if you want. I'll give you two.

I think again, number one for me is really getting really, really good at Excel. So that is understanding the different functions that are available, understanding data structures, the difference between structured data and unstructured data, understanding how to take something and convert it into a table to transform that via Power Query. I'm amazed at how few people even are using Power Query with how incredible it is. I would also go so far as to say really getting good at keyboard shortcuts. Because again, when you're partnering, when you're working with a CEO and he or she starts describing a specific way in which he wants to grow the business or forecast whatever you don't have the opportunity to say, okay, just gimme one second, let me go. You got to be like conducting a symphony on your keyboard to easily make what that person is saying come to life to maximize your time. So Excel is the number one thing that I would say. The second piece of advice is understand both sides. Don't just understand the FPA side of things because there's so much you'll be weaving on the table. Really understand how financial statements are produced. Understand the difference between cash and accrual accounting. Understand journal entries, because that will all make a huge impact in the forecast that you built.

Got it. Thank you. Appreciate that. And so we got Excel and then understanding also the other sides of that. I love the shortcut example. A lot of great information in there. If someone wants to get a hold of you, wants to learn more about you after listening to this, they're like, I want to be the CFO guy. How are they getting hold of you? How do they learn about you?

So a few ways. You could always send me an email@joshcfo guy.com as long as you send me a genuine email and it's not, hey, can you hire me or can I sell you this thing? I will respond. You could also work with me in any of the number of offerings that I have. Whether you need fractional finance and accounting port with mighty digits, whether you are looking for finance and accounting templates, resources courses, or joining my newsletter@your cfoguy.com or we have an Excel plugin that will give you access to all of my templates, all of my dashboards, and we're constantly refining, we're just about to release the capability where you could customize that information, build a financial model or any of these dashboards with your custom inputs and data connected. That company is called ModelWiz. You can check us out@modelwiz.com all right.

Well, thanks for providing those different ways. We'll put that in the show notes. And thanks for joining me. It's always fun to chat with you, Josh. I know we've got to know each other quite well over the last few years and looking forward to finally meeting you in person later this year.

Me too. And I do want to just add one thing that I forgot about March 1st is when we launched our YouTube channel. We just released, I want to say, our 24th video. It's been so much fun, tons and tons of work, but I really am just loving the process. So if anyone is looking for some free resources to grow in their career, I definitely would recommend that you check it out.

All right, great. Well, appreciate that, Josh. And on that note, we'll go ahead and let you go. Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform form of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmark cpe.com downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on Earmark and contact me, the show host for free. Further Details.